The present invention provides a tactical-gear-rail connector-adapter system apparatus and method allowing interconnection of a variety of tactical gear or auxiliary equipment such as gun stocks, camera supports, sights and rangefinders, grips, and clamps, in field-interchangeable configurations.
The Weaver rail mount was a small-arms manufacturer's apparatus to facilitate the removable mounting of telescopic sights on rifles while ensuring proper alignment. With some modifications, the Weaver rail was adopted as a U.S. military standard, the MIL-STD-1913 rail, also known as Picatinny rail, Standardization Agreement (STANAG) 2324 rail, or tactical rail. The NATO Accessory Rail (NAR), also known as Standardization Agreement (STANAG) 4694 rail, is another, very closely related and essentially interchangeable standard, using essentially the same dimensions stated in metric units.
The Picatinny rail provides a standard mounting platform for small arms—rifles and pistols—and consists of rails with angled surfaces for alignment and attachment, and regularly spaced transverse slots allowing screws, bolts, or other connectors to pass underneath the object being mounted. Use of the Picatinny rail is no longer limited to telescopic sights, but also includes mounting auxiliary equipment such as night vision devices, reflex sights, laser aiming modules, tactical lights, cameras, fore-grips, bipods, and bayonets to small arms in both military and non-military uses.
A large and growing amount of auxiliary equipment using the Picatinny-rail system now exists. Just one continuous unit of Picatinny rail is unlikely to be adequate to properly mount all of the auxiliary equipment, because of a lack of total mounting area and because in-line mounting causes some equipment to be ahead or behind other equipment along the line of fire. Even where equipment can be fit onto a single rail by clever arrangement, that clever arrangement is likely to cause complications if any reconfiguration is later needed in the field. Also, some auxiliary equipment is better mounted at some angle to the line of fire.
In some circumstances, only the auxiliary equipment is needed, without any rifle or pistol, such as with cameras, spotting scopes, rangefinders, remotely located equipment, and decoy equipment. Also, in some circumstances, it is not possible or proper to point a firearm toward an object of interest just for the sake of getting a photograph, measurement, or reading. In such circumstances, mounting to Picatinny rails that are not attached to a firearm, but that still provide the properly aligned mounting surfaces, and still allow for the use of stocks, grips, bipods, and the like, is desirable.
The Picatinny rail standard provides for rail-runs of the actual rails and rail-grabbers which are clamps or receivers of proper size and configuration that can be tightened or clamped down on a rail-run. Any given piece of tactical gear or auxiliary equipment generally has either a rail-run or a rail-grabber provided, but not both. Therefore, a problem is encountered when, for example, it is found in the field to be necessary to interconnect two pieces both having only rail-runs or both having only rail-grabbers.
Another problem encountered in the field is a lack of clearance to mount one piece to another, even where the proper rail-run and rail-grabber are present. For example, something else might already be mounted and taking up space, extending well past its rail-grabber section and preventing the mounting of a second piece.
There is a need for a rail-mounting connector-adapter system, utilizing the Picatinny-rail standard, that provides a greater amount of mounting options for small-arms and non-firearm tactical gear auxiliary equipment.